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Review: The Smoke Hunter: A gripping adventure thriller

The Smoke Hunter: A gripping adventure thriller with a suffragette heroine The Smoke Hunter: A gripping adventure thriller with a suffragette heroine by Jacquelyn Benson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was kindly given this book for a free and honest review from Headline publishing and is due for release on 3rd November 2015.

The beginning of this book starts in 1632 in the Cayo District of New Spain and introduces us to a monk there to convert the local tribal population to Catholicism. During his time there he is distracted by a myth of great interest a possible link to the long lost location of El Dorado.

Picking up from this in 1882 London we meet Eleanora (Ellie) Mallory who works as part of the civil service as an archivist and also an activist in the suffragette movement. Whilst she is waiting to speak to her boss she locates, a book amongst his papers with a mysterious pendant and a map and upon conclusion of their meeting decides he is unaware of its importance and decides to steal it away when she clears her desk.

This causes a chain of events whereby she is being chased by two ominous figures in a Professor of St Andrews with a dark past and his henchman for a mysterious client seeking a powerful symbol from the past.

Ellie is a little green as an archaeologist and finds herself whisked away under an assumed name to a hotel in British Honduras in the hopes of finding somebody to take her into the surrounding Jungle. But after several encounters with Adam Bates and the bad guys hot on her heals for the treasure, she convinces him to assist her on her expedition. Adam is keen to protect the site for its historical significance as the trail could lead to a yet to be unidentified people that precede even the Mayan's and Aztec peoples of this region.

The relationship between Ellie and Adam is very naive from Ellie's standpoint and yet charismatic and reminded me a lot of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc or the 1984 classic Romancing the Stone.

This book takes you on the twists and turns of the expedition and without giving away too much in the way of spoilers, grips you with a fast pacing plot to the end, where I was left wanting more.

I really liked the fact that there was a female protagonist as usually they play second fiddle to the male character, but Ellie was portrayed as determined and willing to try new things and use her initiative to problem solve.

I have a feeling this could be developing into a series based on the way the book was concluded and would be interested to see where life will take her next.

With this in mind I have given this 4 stars.


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Location: Buntingford SG9 9FJ, UK

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